Legality of Email Extraction

When going through the process of email harvesting there are some issues to consider in the legality of email extraction. Automatic email harvesting programs are illegal in many countries and in many situations. Australia and the United States, among others, have enacted legislation aimed at spammers to stop unwanted emails. This legislation makes it illegal to generate possible email addresses as well as harvest emails from third party sites if they explicitly state a privacy contract with the site users. In many cases, the legality of email extraction is not relevant, but it is illegal to send mail to the addresses extracted.